Expansion Details

Developer: BlizzardPublisher: Activision/BlizzardPlatforms: Windows, Mac, Xbox 360, PS3, PS4Release Date: March 25, 2014 (console versions to come later)Price: $39.99 (requires base Diablo III)Links:Official website
The battle for the soul of Diablo III is over. “What kind of game is this?” was a question asked from its very start, thanks to the seemingly over-the-top, always-online infrastructure that marred the game's launch. This was exacerbated by the institution of in-game Auction Houses trading in both in-game gold and real money, a system loved by gold sellers but loathed by pretty much everyone else. Then there was the overly self-serious storyline, an odd fit for a game intended to be played and replayed at higher and higher difficulties. Now, after two years of play and patching, Diablo III has finally realized what it wants to be—and it's much better for it.

What Diablo III wants to be is a raid simulator. It's the feeling of taking a high-level character, making all your skills work in harmony, seeing a huge collision of enemies and allies, being able to read the situation and make order out of chaos and survive and thrive (even if it's by the skin of your teeth), and then hoping for some massively improved loot out of the whole experience. That feeling, familiar to high-level raiders in World Of Warcraft and its ilk, is what Diablo is about. But instead of the fight-chaos-loot loop taking place a couple of times per week with a couple dozen guildmates, the Diablo series managed to do it every five to 10 minutes with one to four characters, forming a motivating loop that works surprisingly well.

So how does Diablo III, with its new patches and the Reaper Of Souls expansion, accomplish this? First, it's taken the Auction House and burnt that sucker to the ground. Both the real-money and the gold Auction Houses were cynically conceived and disastrously implemented, severely damaging player motivation. As Craig Bamford wrote in a stellar piece on the feature's economics, the Auction House turned every stat in the game into gold-finding, and tough bosses became annoyances preventing further progression rather than pleasant challenges. “If you don’tbuy the gear, you’ll feel like a sucker. If you do buy the gear (and sell the stuff you get), you’ll be alienated from what you made,” wrote Bamford, encompassing how a potentially great game turned unsatisfying as soon as it turned difficult.

The positive effects of eliminating the Auction House cannot be overstated: Diablo III is now fun to play on its own, without a terrible shopping metagame demanding attention. But the shutdown of the Auction House is only half of the issue. The wide diversity of potential loot drops in the original incarnation of Diablo III made having pure random loot difficult for straightforward character improvement.

Now, the random item generator is instead severely weighted to generate loot almost exclusively for whatever class the player is using. My Demon Hunter, for example, was overwhelmed by Dexterity and Vitality-boosting gear, while my Barbarian got Strength and Vitality. This makes every piece of loot that drops from every chest or off of every monster seem potentially useful, so it's always a rush to grab a drop and check the inventory to see if it's good. The moment-to-moment gameplay that was always there is now finally supported by Diablo III's progression system.

Secondly, that moment-to-moment play is still fantastic. This was always Diablo III's greatest strength, and it's only been accented by patch tweaks and the expansion's addition of the Crusader class, a smash-tastic delight that comes as a welcome addition, given the original game's lack of heavily armored knight-type classes. After spending all day doing the supposedly repetitive task of finding bounties in Reaper Of Souls' new Adventure mode, I started appreciating the clever tweaks Blizzard made to make massive chaotic battles seem comprehensible.

One of the most critical tweaks: Diablo III maintains your target for as long as you hold down the mouse button. No matter how much you vault all over the screen (or the enemy teleports itself, or the mouse cursor gets moved, or a swarm of demons gets in the way), that target remains. This allows finding bosses in all of those chaotic situations possible, and it almost always works the way that I want it to work, despite all the ways it could go wrong. Diablo III also has multiple complementary/redundant cushions that prevent player characters from dying too quickly. Class skills, enemy health drops, player potions, and equipment all keep health flowing, and they usually allow daring escapes from tough situation... at least once. These things were present in the game before the expansion and patches, of course, but they take on new value now that the expansion has refocused on the act of combat.

Emphasis on play

Two years on, Diablo III now knows that the act of playing is its best feature. Perhaps Torchlight II has it beat as an RPG, and Path Of Exile has it beat as a competitive gaming experience, but as far as the act of simple playing, Diablo III is currently unbeatable.

Reaper Of Souls' new Adventure mode is the final acknowledgment of that fact. It dispenses with the game's plot entirely and removes most geographical progression, instead encouraging players to hunt “bounties” by simply teleporting to different areas and killing bosses or doing local events. Adventure mode, and specifically the Nephalem Rifts at its heart, distill the game down to combat, combat, and more combat, with well-balanced, engaging battles.

Everything in Diablo III now channels players into this idea. Difficulty settings are no longer a simple progression of Normal-to-Nightmare-to-Hell-to-Inferno, but are now based on player choice. Once Normal is too easy, move up to Hard, then to Expert and Master and so on, no matter where you are in the story or Adventure mode. This can be awkward, in that you now have to decide when a game is too easy in order to re-create it, but it's probably the best Blizzard could do given the already existing structure of the game.

This tweak also makes early game progression a conveyor belt that takes players straight to high-level “raid” content instead of a means to its own end. Within two days of the expansion's launch, I had friends with level 70 Crusaders just from grinding Adventure mode (yes, they did sleep and log off occasionally). With almost any other role-playing game, this would be a problem, but in this case, it's Diablo III realizing its strengths and bypassing its weaknesses. Theoretically, I could find a problem with the lack of meaningful progression through in-game space or with character class loot simply being handed to me. But in practice? I can put my head down and play this game for hours because the metagame isn't what's important anymore.

Reaper Of Souls also includes a fifth act for Diablo III, focusing on the fallen angel Malthael. The Act itself is huge, and its locations—a medieval European city, a dangerous swamp, and Pandemonium (the battleground between heaven and hell)—all provide a welcome sense of variety in art style while remaining consistent in overall tone. The boss fights are also much better designed than those of the original game, encouraging paying attention beyond the occasional dodge.

The story... well, the story is still excessively self-serious without having earned it. But there aren't as many wince-inducing moments as in the original game, and that's an improvement. Many of the dangling threads from the original story are completed as well, but at least one major unresolved plotline leaves room for further expansions.

Blizzard has built its empire on video games that are playable and replayable; lifestyle games instead of single-serving playthroughs. Diablo III always fit awkwardly into that idea, like it was trying too hard to be all things to all people instead of being great on its own. It's taken two years, multiple patches, and a major expansion, but Diablo III has finally rediscovered the moment-to-moment gameplay that made the series great, and fixed—or removed—almost everything that got in the way of that greatness. Reaper Of Souls is the redemption of Diablo III.